Shakespeare in Portuguese

Today is Brazil’s Independence Day which is celebrated throughout the country with outdoor events like parades, air shows, musical concerts and fireworks in the evening. To mark this occasion Brazilian professor and translator Rafael Raffaelli reflects on the challenges of translating Shakespeare into Portuguese.

Rafael Raffaelli
07 Sep 2017

I was born in São Paulo, Brazil,
in 1953. I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology, with Post-Doctoral studies in
Theatre, and am currently a retired professor from the Federal University of
Santa Catarina (Brazil).

I
translated into Portuguese four Shakespeare’s plays: As You Like It, The Tempest,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth. To translate Shakespeare is an arduous
endeavour and a challenge to every translator in any language. I had to decipher the obscure metaphors, the historical and cultural
references, the archaisms and neologisms, puns, idioms, fixed expressions and
proverbs used in the Elizabethan era.

Beyond the historical, cultural and linguistic aspects of the text,
Shakespeare’s remarkable knowledge about the natural world required a special
attention; e.g., the charmed
potion cooked in the cauldron of the weird sisters (Macbeth 4.1) has a reputation of being an authentic account about
witchcraft, as the magical concoction would be made up with specimens from the
British Isles that Scottish witches might come across. These specimens were
possibly chosen by its ‘malignity’ in terms of being poisonous or evil in
accordance with common sense beliefs in Shakespeare’s time. In addition, the
potion contains parts of mythic or exotic animals
chosen strictly by its symbolisms. I added explanatory notes to the text to
make the readers aware of all these allusions and semantic complexities.

But nothing surpasses the difficulty of translating the iambic
pentameters, as rhythm patterns are impossible to reproduce in Portuguese
since verses written in Portuguese have a metre determined by the number
of syllables in a line. In order to solve this problem, I employed the
decasyllable pattern solely in the translation of the rhymed lines. I intended
to be faithful as possible to the original plays and produce similar effects on
readers as those created by Shakespeare on his audience. Furthermore, I opted
to translate the plays in plain Portuguese that may be comprehended by
non-specialist readers and may be staged in the way they were
translated.

Portuguese translations by Rafael Raffaeli which he donated to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library

Get involved

Useful

Follow us

Shakespeare's New Place

Walk in Shakespeare’s footsteps and meet the man behind the works.

The independent charity that cares for the world’s greatest Shakespeare heritage sites in Stratford-upon-Avon, and promotes the enjoyment and understanding of his works, life and times all over the world. Celebrating Shakespeare is at the heart of everything we do.